


The Ark

by angelheadedhipster



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: "fun", Gen, I put whiskey in there because i can, Sorry Topher Youre Amazing, Topher feels, Yuletide, i love this prompt i love these people, sadnesss and martyrdom and suicide, so fun, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 23:19:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2791361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelheadedhipster/pseuds/angelheadedhipster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Topher knows what he knows. Adelle knows things, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [waspabi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/waspabi/gifts).



She watched him work, watched him fit metal rods into metal fixings. His face was smoother than it had been in awhile, that dancing light in his eyes quieter. It felt good to watch him tinker. She remembered this version of Topher, how much he liked to solve problems.

_“That’s the record,” she’d said to him, the first time she’d shown him this room. “Do you think you can beat it?”_

_“Uh, to a pulp,” Topher had said._

He did. He beat all the records to a pulp. He approached problems like enemies, and the world like one very long complex game that he knew he was best at. The best in the world.

He was mumbling something now.

“What was that, sweetheart?” Adelle asked. It was good to get him talking. He felt better when he was talking, and sometimes he said things that were important. Sometimes he said things that were horrible, too, things Adelle wished she could unhear.

“I know what I KNOW,” Topher said, lifting his head and looking at her. His eyes were bloodshot, exhausted but alert. He looked at her like he wasn’t really seeing anything in front of him, like she wasn’t a person so much as a complex system of equations. Like he was looking at her with only 10% of his mind, if that.

It had been something that frustrated her about Topher, and then became something she came to sort of admire, in a way. The part of himself that he gave to human interactions was the bare minimum; he always preferred to spend his time and mental energy on more interesting, fruitful things.

Now...now she didn’t know how much of his mind was working on the problem and how much had come unmoored, curled in ball in his own head, running scenarios and knowing terrible truths that he couldn’t unknow.

“Yes, darling,” Adelle said. “You do.”

And wasn’t that the problem.

 

She watched him work. Today, he was talking more. It made her feel better.

“The difference in the neural architecture of someone like Echo versus any of the other subjects...” Today his mouth had connected up to some mysterious part of his brain that remembered things, that knew things, that wanted to share things. Adelle listened. She liked listening to him.

“I mean, it’s unprecedented, sure, but it sort of has to happen, y’know? That’s what evolutionary biology has always told us - the long term, structurally dependent reaction to outside forces. Given enough mutations in the gene pool, and enough subjects, and you’d have to come up with someone like her.”

“Someone like Echo.” Adelle answered only to keep him going, a verbal cue, normalcy.

“Caroline, I guess, even before she was Echo,” Topher said. “The difference between her, a really quality Active, and even someone like, say, November, or Whiskey-”

Adelle flinched, hoping Topher wouldn’t notice.

“Or, or...Or Dr. Saunders. Or...that’s not right.”

Ah. He had noticed.

“The neural architecture, dear, you were saying?” Adele prompted.

“Whiskey. Claire,” Topher looked at her now, and his eyes were unfocused, and he looked so much younger. He was a child again, not an irascible genius, cold hearted and clear eyed. Adelle much preferred irascible. She had never wanted children. “Where’s Claire?”

There were so few things in the entire universe that Topher didn’t know, Adelle thought. How unfortunate that she knew the answer to this one.

Alpha had told her. She’d been asking after the state of the House when he got here, trying to ascertain where they stood in terms of supplies, of people, and he’d mentioned what it had been like when he found it. Bodies everywhere, mostly Butchers, he thought, and they all look like they’d fallen where they lay. One of the criminal profilers in his mind had surmised that they’d been gassed - rigor mortis was in accordance with that outcome.

_“Gassed? By whom?” Adelle had asked._

_Alpha had looked at her out of the corner of his eye, his face feral and frightening. She really did not like Alpha._

_“Top floor,” he said. “Her legs dangling over the side. Wearing this crazy white dress, like a virgin holy bride.”_

_“Who?”_

_“Her eyes were so big. Still wide open.”_

How Whiskey had done it, she had no idea. Dr. Saunders had stayed behind when they’d all left, saying she was coming soon, coming after them, though of course Adelle had never believed that. The truth was, she’d mostly forgotten about her. There had been battles to fight and people to lead and gardens to plant and a world to try to rebuild. One more lost Active, even one like her...Whiskey had fallen into the mists in her head, so many many victims, so many dead.

“She’s dead, Topher,” she said now. “Whiskey died, she’s gone.”

It was harsh, and it probably wouldn’t help, but she was tired. Tired of trying to make everything seem like the best, tired of trying to take care of everyone. It wasn’t in her nature. She didn’t believe the best. She didn’t believe they would get out of this; she never had. She had always known this human experiment wouldn’t end well, maybe from the moment Rossum approached her. She’d done it anyway.

She hadn’t taken care of Claire. Of Whiskey, that is. Whiskey had been one of her Dolls, one of the bodies charged in her care, and Adelle had failed her. Had gotten her scarred, hurt, and, ultimately, killed. That Doll, that body, she had been Adelle’s responsibility. That was the job.

She couldn’t take care of everyone. People had died, and would die. Topher deserved to know that.

Topher nodded, slowly. “Less evolved neural pathways,” he said, quietly. “Selected against when circumstances call for biological malleability and abrupt gene modification.”

“I suppose so,” said Adelle.

He wasn’t looking at her now, and he wasn’t talking, back to writing something in his notebook. Adelle looked over at the paper - the usual series of arrows, diagrams, lines leading to other lines. But across the top, what the arrows all came from, rather than numbers, was a sentence - “I’m just a series of excuses.”

Topher bit his lip and drew another line, this time connecting ‘series’ to the words ‘imprinting’ and ‘crazy’ in the lower left corner. She watched him work.

 

She could punch him. He probably wouldn’t realize why, or he would act like he didn’t, but he’d know. He was a bloody genius, of course he’d know.

The device he’d made, the device that would put everyone’s souls back where they belonged, that would “heal” the “world,” had to be operated manually, and Topher thought he had to be the one to flip the switch. Absolutely fucking not.

“Two meters,” Topher was mumbling now, not looking at Bennett anymore. “Two meters.”

Maybe if she made it a challenge, or a game. I dare you to find a way to not have to push that button manually, you idiot child.

This was a man (a boy?) who had invented a gun that could suck the souls out of humans from ten feet away. And it had taken him about twenty minutes.

And now he’d made some miraculous contraption, and given it a manual switch. Manual. A switch only he could push, and which would explode on him, and kill him, and take him out of her life forever, one more lost sheep. And maybe she’d forget him in a few years, in the new world, and he’d fade. He was one more body entrusted to her care that she would fail.

Manual.

Adele got up, because she couldn’t sit there anymore and look at him. She walked over to the window, and looked down.

This had been Topher’s view, for years. Such as it was - he lived in a life without windows. Her office, in addition to a fantastically well stocked bar, had sky high views. He just had this - a balcony looking out over a spa, all hardwood floors and carefully chosen carpets, and walking through it, carefully chosen people. Dolls. Playthings. Walking around, well cared for, earning their keep with their very bodies, minds, souls. This was what he saw every day, when he bothered to look up from his machines.

And now...now what did he see, when he was looking at his machines? What did he see when he wasn’t?

He was making a choice.

He was doing this on purpose, because this was his choice.

He was fixing things in the only way he knew how - make a button, push it, correct the problem.

He had decided what was right. She had to let him. She would watch him work.

 

She stopped him at the bottom of the stairs, the stairs up to his office. From there he would take the stairs up to her office, and that would be it.

“You don’t have to do this, Topher, you know that,” she said.

“Manual,” he said, but he didn’t look at her. “Besides, your job’s way harder.”

Around them people were gathering, the Dolls were restless. They could sense something was happening, was changing.

“I build the ark,” Topher said. “I don’t get to be on it.”

“You could be.”

“No. I can’t.”

That was the last time she ever saw him. He stood in his usual place, in his old ‘office’, and looked down at her as she gathered the Dolls, rounded people up, tried to imagine what hazards the outside world would throw at them. She was thinking about what she would do with all these people, all these whole, stupid people, and so she didn’t even look up, even see him that last time. He watched her work.


End file.
